Guild Wars 2

What I feel to be a core issue in WvW (at least in low to mid tier; I’m not sure how this affects higher tier servers with more population) is that towers and keeps have too much passive defense and detection. Not only is this a core reason why zergs are beneficial, but it often creates stagnant or hopeless situations.

Keeps have waypoints which allow players to warp directly to an attacked area and serve as a shortcut to defend locations faster. White swords display whenever anything is attacked, making it much easier to respond to attacks. Fortified structures take ages to break into, giving the enemy too much time to react to an attack.

All these factors encourage zerging and discourage splitting into smaller groups. If you have superior numbers you can easily go and overwhelm the enemy and if they try a counterattack it is easily detected and reacted to by the zerg, which then heads right back to attacking. Since buildings, especially fortified ones, take so long to capture and attacks are easily detected, players are encouraged to stick together and use their numbers as a defense, pool together their supply, and focus on taking down 1 building after another via force.

This ease of defense also creates stale game-play where the server with a number disadvantage is unable to make any sort of progress or capture anything other than their own territory due to the enemies ability to respond. Even in near equal match ups it can become stale, with no server able to take anything but the proximity towers, if even that.

I feel WvW could be vastly improved if defense and detection was more player involved.

- What if waypoints in keeps were completely removed?
- What if fortified walls and gates didn’t boost health, but instead increased the effectiveness of repairs and gave players standing nearby a defensive buff?
- What if white swords only showed up when a wall/gate was destroyed, or didn’t show up at all?

All this could make it easier for smaller groups to take towers/keeps and make sneaky and split attacks more effective, which could encourage smaller groups and help prevent stagnant and hopeless situations.

I totally disagree with this, at the moment I think keeps and towers are too easy to capture. Ram Mastery caused that. Waypoints are worked for and if a server can correctly kill dolyaks and cap camps then the keeps wouldn’t get to that point anyway. Now, you’re talking crazy with that white swords idea. If white swords were only when a gate was destroyed then the commander would have to be quite quick to get to the keep and defend, and if he’s at a certain place in the map(opposite side) then it would probably be impossible for him to get there.

I would have to disagree from a T1 perspective. Assuming the keep/tower is fully upgraded, it can be either near impossible to take or very easy. I would never expect to be able to just throw bodies at a keep and take it. At least in T1 most T3 keeps are taken by either vastly out numbering the the server on the map or attacking multiple things across multiple maps. Being vastly out numbered is just a war of attrition, once your out of supply, there is only some much you can do.

So for the most part I think they are fine as is for tier 1.

I don’t agree with you. I am on a tier one server—you would think that on such a heavily populated server it would be impossible to attack a tower or keep without the whole server being aware of it. Not true every day there are situations where small groups can be effective against towers and even keeps, even with huge zerges moving around the map.

I think on lower level servers a good havoc team or group would have a “blast”!

Zikory.6871:

I would have to disagree from a T1 perspective. Assuming the keep/tower is fully upgraded, it can be either near impossible to take or very easy. I would never expect to be able to just throw bodies at a keep and take it. At least in T1 most T3 keeps are taken by either vastly out numbering the the server on the map or attacking multiple things across multiple maps. Being vastly out numbered is just a war of attrition, once your out of supply, there is only some much you can do.

So for the most part I think they are fine as is for tier 1.

My OP is directed towards low to mid tier servers.

Prehaps the issue comes from WvW being designed around far more players than we are seeing in these servers, in which case something needs to be done to create a better experience for servers based off the population, maybe through leagues which we could have different settings. Gold could remain unchanged while bronze and silver could see some of the changes I suggested.

Are you sure you are direct toward low tier servers?

I have seen plenty of 5~6 man ninja towers, but it may not do the server any good, as the server with bigger zerg will get kitten and swing full force on the ninja server, and give the other server tons breathing room.

Bri.8354:

Zikory.6871:

I would have to disagree from a T1 perspective. Assuming the keep/tower is fully upgraded, it can be either near impossible to take or very easy. I would never expect to be able to just throw bodies at a keep and take it. At least in T1 most T3 keeps are taken by either vastly out numbering the the server on the map or attacking multiple things across multiple maps. Being vastly out numbered is just a war of attrition, once your out of supply, there is only some much you can do.

So for the most part I think they are fine as is for tier 1.

My OP is directed towards low to mid tier servers.

Prehaps the issue comes from WvW being designed around far more players than we are seeing in these servers, in which case something needs to be done to create a better experience for servers based off the population, maybe through leagues which we could have different settings. Gold could remain unchanged while bronze and silver could see some of the changes I suggested.

I understand, I was only commenting on my perspective as a t1 player since you stated you were unsure about how it effects the higher populated tiers.

While I agree there there should be differences between tiers to create a more enjoyable experience all around, I think it may not be possible due to limitations anet has.

Bri.8354:

What I feel to be a core issue in WvW (at least in low to mid tier; I’m not sure how this affects higher tier servers with more population) is that towers and keeps have too much passive defense and detection. Not only is this a core reason why zergs are beneficial, but it often creates stagnant or hopeless situations.

Keeps have waypoints which allow players to warp directly to an attacked area and serve as a shortcut to defend locations faster. White swords display whenever anything is attacked, making it much easier to respond to attacks. Fortified structures take ages to break into, giving the enemy too much time to react to an attack.

All these factors encourage zerging and discourage splitting into smaller groups. If you have superior numbers you can easily go and overwhelm the enemy and if they try a counterattack it is easily detected and reacted to by the zerg, which then heads right back to attacking. Since buildings, especially fortified ones, take so long to capture and attacks are easily detected, players are encouraged to stick together and use their numbers as a defense, pool together their supply, and focus on taking down 1 building after another via force.

This ease of defense also creates stale game-play where the server with a number disadvantage is unable to make any sort of progress or capture anything other than their own territory due to the enemies ability to respond. Even in near equal match ups it can become stale, with no server able to take anything but the proximity towers, if even that.

I feel WvW could be vastly improved if defense and detection was more player involved.

- What if waypoints in keeps were completely removed?
- What if fortified walls and gates didn’t boost health, but instead increased the effectiveness of repairs and gave players standing nearby a defensive buff?
- What if white swords only showed up when a wall/gate was destroyed, or didn’t show up at all?

All this could make it easier for smaller groups to take towers/keeps and make sneaky and split attacks more effective, which could encourage smaller groups and help prevent stagnant and hopeless situations.

Hi

I strongly disagree with you on this. I play in bronze league so I am no stranger to being outmanned.

I think borderland maps need to be further reworked. On your home turf the defenders should have a big advantage over the entire map over the attacking force, currently it is the exactly opposite due to travel times from spawn. Removing Garison and keep waypoints will make this even worse then it is instead of remedy this problem.

2nd you have 30 seconds before swords show up “as is” right now. In organized groups you can melt an outer gate and be on inner before it shows up on the map, remember, many low tier servers do not have scouts watching at all times.

Furthermore, currently when outer gate goes down, swords often disappear as group moves onto inner, and there is another 30 seconds before they appear again on inner. Anyone relying purely on swords for keep/tower status is just not going to be tehre in time anyways waypoint or no waypoint.

Speaking of scouts, if you go against server that uses them, they are already there and removing swords will have zero effect one way or the other due to scout prescence. Another words, waste of dev resources.

Now, pugs are pugs and do not understand or care for swords, however, that is your personal server / community organizational problem, not a game design problem.

So the mechanics which you speak of and their counters are already largely in the game. EB is fine as it is, Borderlands need to be easier to defend, especially when 2 attacking servers are both qued on your home BL and you have outmanned buff on, and travel/sword restrictions go against that and make this much worse.

I forgot one more but extremely important factor here. Traveling to the fight and runing around looking for one is very boring and just plainly not fun. Fighting is fun.

If you remove waypoints etc. and increase the travel time, you are removing a lot of fun from WvW.

eventually you will learn standard ninja procedure. until then, have fun autoing gates before youve built 3 rams…. and getting owned.

@ OP

I have to disagree. IMO defending could use a boost. If you’re in a situation where your server’s effort is a couple groups with 10 people with a couple catas or rams trying to sneak a T3 structure on any map that is generally always controlled by the enemy then yes you’re going to run into problems if the enemy has a defense team and that’s the way it should be.

People already babysit these structures for no reward and for the amount of money and time upgrading takes, a small band of people should not be able to crack it open undetected, sorry. Especially with Anet making siege stronger with each update. The elephant in the room is population discrepancy, they have impenetrable structures because your server isn’t able to compete in the first place.

I disagree strongly. If enemy servers outman you most of the situations you will be having hard time holding anything for long. Especially when its your own home border and there is two sides attacking you.

The rams are way more powerful than they should be at the moment to make defending worth while when you are the underdog in your match up. You can upgrade a keep for 2-3 hours and siege up, just to see it gone in 10 minutes because you couldn’t get enough people to man those Arrow carts and what not to destroy the 3 superior rams…

There should be some sort of wvw defensive abilities you can throw ranks into. Like the effectiveness of using supply to repair, and the ability to bubble a gate temporarily to provide even 15~20s extra response time.

I feel there should be some more creativity for the wvw ranks in general. So far all of the buffs have been offensive in nature— it would be nice to see some defensive buffs. And I’m not talking “autowin with arrow carts”, I’m taking “buy your group some time as a result of you being there to watch the tower.”

What do castles do when they’re under siege? Close the gates and raise the moat. Sometimes when I’m watching a tower and it comes under siege by a zerg I feel completely helpless. I should be rewarded in some way for my vigilance.

~ Kovu

very much disagree with u, but im on a higher tier server.we often dont have time to react. u see the swords and very often its almost too late as they are already at inner of the keep for example. defending is a pain as eles can destroy everything on wassl. dragontooth completely ignores los and u can reach far in the back placed siege aswell.

also defending vs omega golemrush…good luck with that…

Train your people not to auto-attack the gate before all the rams are built. If you have 3 people with ram mastery and drop 3 superior flame rams then those gates are going down before white swords even show up. Supply at a camp with the +5 supply buff and that only takes 10 people to build those rams.

Bonus points – with a handful of eles and necros you can keep defenders from wanting to get anywhere near the wall to defend.